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Stalin's influence on the Soviet Union
Stalin's influence on the Soviet Union
Stalin's influence on the Soviet Union
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He wanted to improve power and control over the Soviet Union by decentralizing them. This plan did work. “An index of growth industrial production reached 184 in 1965(1958=100), thus exceeding plan, and national income grew by 59%, little short of the planned figure. . . From 1958 to 1965, the annual average growth rate was 5.2% compared with 5.1% for France and Italy, 4.8% for Western Germany, 4.5% for USA and 9.6% for Japan. The USSR was among the European leaders, but the small deceleration suggests that the economy was much nearer to a stage of maturity with a tendency for growth to come much nearer to West European levels after the rapid recovery miracles of the 1950s. Thus the Soviet economy (industrial sector) was relatively well performed during this period.” …show more content…
In Khrushchev's 1956 speech, The Cult of Personality and its Consequences, Khrushchev denounced many of Stalin’s actions. First, he denounced Stalin’s cult of personality or the use of state media to enshrine a leader. Khrushchev believed that respect and admiration for him should be earned. Furthermore, Khrushchev criticized Stalin harshness and utter disrespect to the people around him as well as his citizens. Khrushchev was still a powerful and ruthless man. However, he was considered much more moderate than Stalin. Additionally, Khrushchev highly disapproved of Stalin’s purges. Throughout the duration of these purges, Stalin killed over half a million people who opposed his points of view. Lastly, Khrushchev highly opposed Stalin’s conduct of World War
The impact Stalin has had on the world is immense and at some periods in history devastating. Contrasting, Unknown Stalin by Zhores Medvedev and Stalin:Breaker of Nations by Robert Conquest, to gain different historical perspectives of Stalin. Medvedev does not go into much detail into Stalin’s rise to power in the beginning of the book but starts with his death. He takes an approach giving a historical portrayal of Stalin that focuses not only on how callus and brutal he could be, but how all of his success was made possible by his patience and intelligence . In contrast, Conquest’s book he begins with Stalin’s birth, like many biographies, and his rise in the ranks in the Bolshevik party, but his book is more intimate as it explains his emotional states. Conquest argues that Stalin's main goal was the preservation of his vision of Maxist-Leninism and the removal people he deemed as enemies of that vision. These books take different paths to understanding Stalin as a person and as the Head of State of the Soviet Union. Is Stalin's portrayal as a megalomaniac with an insatiable lust for control, fear and power accurate and how must we use his other social positions, husband, father, friend, and fellow revolutionary, to answer this question. Looking through these two books we can find the sides ignored by many and the sides that were rightly feared of Stalin.
Khrushchev rose steadily up the party ladder, always combining his talents as an administrator with his technical training. After assignments in the Ukraine, he became head of the Moscow regional party committee, and in 1934 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist party. In these positions he directed the construction of the Moscow subway. Although increasingly influential, Khrushchev was never an intimate associate of Joseph Stalin; he concentrated on technical rather than political accomplishment. After World War II he was brought back to Moscow, where he became ¡¥one of stalin¡¦s top advisers¡¦. When Stalin died in 1953, Khrushchev used his wit to thrust all his opponents for leadership, including Malenkov. He became both Party Secretary and controlled the government through his associate Marshal Bulganin, who he named Premier. He ruled from 1956 to 1964.
Joseph Stalin was the son of a poor shoemaker from a backward province with a significantly minimum amount of education. Stalin had always had a place for faith in the destiny of the Russian social revolution and an incredible amount of determination to play a role in it. Stalin’s rise to power was remarkable and deadly, yet in an unexplainable twenty-nine years of leadership he turned Russia into a highly industrialized nation. Stalin was a tyrannical ruler who played the most significant role in shaping the direct of Europe at the end of World War II in 1945. He went from a young revolutionist to an absolute leader of Soviet Russia. His involvement with domestic and foreign policies cast his shadow upon the world at the end of World War II with his radical ideals. The policy of socialism, the Five Year Plans, and the collectivization of Agriculture were all of Stalin’s key methods of casting this impactful shadow on the world.
“His plans were in 5 year intervals in which the government took control over all businesses and industries, focused mainly on factory output/transportation and to implement quota systems” (Greatneck). “The Soviet Union needed to become a top tier area in the global market, but their insufficient funds were what stopped from becoming types of governments such as communist, socialist and capitalist” (StudentPulse). Banks ceased to bail out industrial enterprises. The civilian administrative system, which was already creaking under wartime strains, started to collapse.
Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin were similar in what they claimed to be, but in actuality they were very different people. Although Stalin claimed that he followed Leninism, the philosophy that Lenin developed from Marxism, he often distorted it to follow what he wanted to do. While Lenin wanted to make a unified society without classes, with production in the hands of the people, while Stalin wanted to make Russia into a modern industrial powerhouse by using the government to control production. Lenin accomplished his goals through violence, because he thought achieving Communist revolution was worth using violence, with a ‘The ends justify the means’ mentality. Stalin also used violence to accomplish his goals, however Stalin used much more violence than was often necessary to accomplish his goals. Stalin continued even once he was successful in accomplishing those goals, as he did not stop hurting people, but if anything it gave him more power to hurt people even more. But, at the end of the day, although Lenin ruled for only a very short time, he did raise the standard of living, though there maintained a large amount of hardship. Stalin, however, transformed the USSR from a peasantry to an industrialized nation in less than a decade, he did it on the backs of his millions of victims, who died because of his harsh policies and many purges.
It could be argued that this increasing power for the single leader drawn from his party was due to the need for fast, decisive and unquestioned leadership of the type needed in battle. After all, Russia was portrayed by the Soviet propaganda machine as being at war with its own industrial backwardness as workers were urged to industrial fronts'. If the period of the 1930s is considered, it was a time of crisis. The building tension due to the rise of Nazi Germany making European foreign politics a risky place to navigate, the economic onslaught at home in Russia and the economic depression in the rest of the world making the times harsh. This change then could be argued as being beneficial to the USSR as only a single individual can provide the strong leadership needed, amongst a large group of individuals disputes would hinder the decision making process.
A comparison of these two are Both leaders saw that changes were essential, they knew that without reforms, the Soviet Union would grow weaker and weaker. Khrushchev’s and Gorbachev’s reforms were wide and touched almost all important aspects of the government. One important aspect is how Khrushchev and Gorbachev saw the past and future. When Khrushchev came to power he had a big problem how to replace Stalin and how to rule the country after him. Stalin ruled through a cult of personality and many people thought that he was irreplaceable. At “the Twentieth Congress of the Khrushchev attacks Stalinism and the Cult of Personality in the secret speech, he denounced Stalin and the terror of his regime, everything Stalin did or said was incorrect,
He would always try to stay one step ahead of other countries and try to begin new projects which seemed to fail. Joseph Stalin had many people suffering and killed when he was
boosted the USSR’s economy. Therefore Stalin had created a country which seemed corrupt at the time, but later on it improved by the hard work Stalin had forced upon them.
Stalin, a paranoid ruler, always feared his political opponents, military officials and even common citizens. In his mind he felt they were...
Joseph Stalin controlled everything that happened in the USSR, including the media and According to, “Life In the USSR under Stalin: The people of Russia had to read what the state allowed, see what the state allowed and listen to what the state allowed. The state’s control of the media was complete. Those who attempted to listen, read etc. anything else were severely punished. Everybody knew of the labor camps and that was enough of a deterrent.” Again the fight between the government and the individual, the individual lost again. Joseph Stalin was responsible for taking advantage of millions of people in his own country in which he ruled in, by using media that only he allowed to be listened, read, or seen. He uses propaganda in these types of media, and does not want people to recognize it from outside forces. Joseph Stalin was responsible for brainwashing people to listen to appropriate media in order for him to rule in terror. Joseph Stalin ran a government of total dominance that even controlled the media.
The Soviet Union, which was once a world superpower in the 19th century saw itself in chaos going into the 20th century. These chaoses were marked by the new ideas brought in by the new leaders who had emerged eventually into power. Almost every aspect of the Soviet Union was crumbling at this period both politically and socially, as well as the economy. There were underlying reasons for the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and eventually Eastern Europe. The economy is the most significant aspect of every government. The soviet economy was highly centralized with a “command economy” (p.1. fsmitha.com), which had been broken down due to its complexity and centrally controlled with corruption involved in it. A strong government needs a strong economy to maintain its power and influence, but in this case the economic planning of the Soviet Union was just not working, which had an influence in other communist nations in Eastern Europe as they declined to collapse.
After Vladimir Lenin, a Russian communist revolutionary, politician and political theorist, died, Stalin outmaneuvered his rivals and won the control of the Communist Party. In the tardy 1920’s he became dictator of the Soviet Cumulation. Then he wanted to industrialize the country because at the time the economic was farming. Millions of farmers reluctant to be apart of Stalin’s orders and were killed as penalization. The civilization led a widespread famine across the Soviet Coalescence and killed millions of people. Stalin wanted to kill anyone who opposed him of his orders. He engendered an army of secret police, and inspirited citizens to spy on others which had many people killed or sent to a labor camp. Virtually everyone around Stalin was considered a threat to him, even the Communist Party, the military, and components of the Soviet Coalescence society, s...
To the party audiences he appeared devoid of personal grudge and rancour and even seemed to be a detached Leninist, a guardian of the doctrine who criticized others only for the sake of the cause. Stalin always adopted policies that were broadly approved by the majority of the Communist party. Hence, using his political dexterity, he maintained a good reputation within the party. Stalin also made full use of Lenin?s funeral to advance his position. He tricked Trotsky into not attending the funeral by letting him know that he would never make it on time (of course this was not true).
Joseph Stalin is a polarizing figure. Decades after his death his legacy still continues to create debate about his tumultuous years as the leader of the Soviet Union. This is evident throughout the four documents while some praise Stalin as impeccable others criticize his policies and lack of political, economic, and social progress during his regime. Even though Stalin was behind various violations of human rights he was able to maintain the Soviet Union during a time of turmoil both domestically and internationally as a result he has earned notoriety as a great leader and advocate for Marxist ideology.